


Juuso Kopra: 100

by MeansToOffend (goodmorning)



Series: Optimus Reim, Cursebreaker, and Other Magic Goalies [5]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: 2017-2018 Season, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Gen, i had to restrain myself from adding more, it was truly difficult, there are so many goalies in this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-25
Updated: 2018-01-25
Packaged: 2019-03-09 03:43:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13472994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodmorning/pseuds/MeansToOffend
Summary: Most goalies never stop to wonder where their magic comes from, or what makes it possible, but they love it just the same. Even when it inflicts mildly uncomfortable consequences on them.Or:"Juuso Kopra's eyes snap open. He sucks in a breath, sharp, and holds it."





	Juuso Kopra: 100

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Catznetsov](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catznetsov/gifts).



> Thank you very much for this idea, constantine :)))

In the Northern Hemisphere, ice hockey begins as the light begins to ebb away earlier and earlier, as the shadows begin to lengthen and stretch in strange directions, to scratch at unfamiliar windows and cast monsters onto bedroom walls. Ice hockey begins as the days - and the people - grow short and cold, as the sun begins to lose its battle against wind and cloud, to reach feebly for the things that were so close in the summer.

Ice hockey begins, and the magic responds.

It builds from the moment the puck is dropped in every one of the training camps of September, through the opening nights of every league at every level, through October and November, until goalies everywhere are holding their collective breaths.

December 1. Day breaks over Kushiro, over Vladivostock, Goyang, Shanghai, and as it spreads westward they wake up one by one. Noora Räty stretches in Shenzhen, hair flaming to gold in the light of dawn. Ben Scrivens jerks awake in Ufa, goosebumps tingling as daybreak caresses his face. And still the magic spreads with the sunlight, passing over St. Petersburg, surging towards Finland. It builds more towards Tampere, cresting like a wave before crashing down on Kangasala, the breakwater before the shore.

Juuso Kopra's eyes snap open. He sucks in a breath, sharp, and holds it. There's magic lurking beneath his skin, not the familiar soothing wash of his own but a harsh jangling mess. It itches.

He's not really sure how to scratch a magical itch. Also, he's hungry.

The smell of breakfast cooking draws him downstairs as the sun moves on over Europe. He eats without knowing what will happen to him, what the magic has brought.

Normally he would spend the day on the ice, but Jesperi has the flu and there are games tomorrow and the next day, so his coach has banned him. Instead, Juuso spends the morning playing video games, stopping only to stretch and, later, eat lunch.

While he's cleaning up after himself, washing dishes and trying to drown out the insistent prodding of the magic with a - slightly off-key - hum, dawn is reaching the goalies of North America. The magic is more aware, now that it's found who it meant to find. It doesn't just brush against them, waking them gently like a lover on a lazy morning; it moves through them, shouting them into wakefulness like a child on Christmas Day.

Tuukka Rask wakes angry, crushing his suitcase, and has to take slow, deep breaths. Cory Schneider opens his eyes and closes them again immediately, faced with the sight of his bedside lamp neatly cloven in two. Braden Holtby, a cat again, curls up on his own pillow. Martin Jones startles in a hotel room in Sunrise, tangle of ward-thread cocooning him, his heavy comforter kicked to the floor somehow. Roberto Luongo hears his youngest child's dream and gets up with a craving for crayons. And Optimus Reim stirs, discovering that the paint in his kitchen had been cursed, after all.

Juuso doesn't go back to video games after lunch, because the magic is getting more insistent, whether despite his attempts to ignore it or because of them. Instead, he sits quietly, and tries to feel his way under his own skin.

Pekka Rinne's ceiling fan is fascinating, blades ticking by in regular rhythm, displaced air undulating across his face, and he sinks into it and into it, letting the soft mechanical noise of it draw him further and further in; he doesn't want to be anywhere else but here, seeing and hearing and feeling this fan, and - Juuse Saros comes in and takes the edge off, and Pekka feels like he can breathe again.

Juuso has never actually tried to understand his own magic that much before, since it's always been there and he's had school and hockey to worry about instead, but he does now, because it's familiar and it's _his_ and he's going to need all the help he can get to figure out why he's being poked at now, by this magic so strange and unfamiliar and wild.

In his childhood home, Tony Bruns sits up and screams, making up his mind to join the army at last. In St. Louis, Jonathan Quick turns over in his sleep but doesn't wake.

Juuso's magic welcomes him, warm and relaxing, and he wishes he had introduced himself sooner, or something. As it is, he falls into its embrace easily, letting it soothe him further, breathing long and even.

Jonathan Bernier jolts awake to find that the wards keeping his neighbour's plants alive have vanished in the night, and steels himself to apologise. Marc-Andre Fleury greets the dawn while recovering at home, his relief so strong it wakes up the rest of the neighbourhood.

The magic riding on Juuso really is wild magic, apparently. This makes him shiver, because he knows the legends well enough that he doesn't have to be told: wild magic always requires a sacrifice. He doesn't know what benefit it will provide, can't think what it will want him to sacrifice, isn't sure what the consequences will be if he says no.

It doesn't occur to him that he might _be_ the sacrifice.

\--

They play S-Kiekko the next night. Juuso sees 64 shots and saves 59 of them. They lose. But all of this is completely normal, and the magic is pulling at him like he should already know what it wants.

He still doesn't.

But he finds he can ignore it if he's calling on his own magic, so he does. He falls asleep easily, so easily, swathed in its calming presence.

\--

It's probably lucky for him that he finds out what it wants almost immediately. Even with his magic to quiet his nerves, he doesn't think he could have taken it for very long, the jangling and prickling of the old magic, the worry he keeps feeling when he thinks about it too much.

It's when he's at the rink, warming up for the game against Ässät, that he finally understands. He's thinking about the last time he played them, and the number of goals he'd let in, and hoping he won't embarrass himself quite as badly this time, and the wild magic, the solstice magic, rises to the surface, trembling with excitement.

Juuso wants to shake, too, nerves screeching at him to run away and never come back, but he doesn't. He just takes a deep breath and continues his pregame routine like he doesn't know he's walking to his own doom. He doesn't want the team to think anything is different, to panic, because they're already tired and going to be overmatched, and he doesn't really want to make it any worse for himself than it's already going to be.

The puck is dropped. The magic surges. Ässät shoots. He makes the save.

He makes a lot of saves, actually. And every time he does, the magic pulses in response, more and more often, until it feels like an extra heartbeat. Ässät are sharper, more hungry, than they've ever been, and the Kisa-Eagles have even less answer for them than they ever have, and the magic rises up in him to the point that he doesn't quite know anymore where it ends and his living, breathing, flesh-and-blood self begins.

Juuso makes one last save in the dying seconds of the game, feeling like a being made of magic, with magic holding him together at all the seams it burst apart. He waits for the end.

The buzzer sounds. His team give him a standing ovation in the locker room. He doesn't really know why he's not dead. Juuso is tired, more tired than he's ever felt, and suddenly he just wants to go home.

He collapses into bed as the solstice magic leaves him in a rush, all at once. It's a good thing he's already laying down, because that's when he blacks out.

He wakes up far too early to far too many texts, all of them telling him the same thing: 100 saves.

Juuso shivers, and hopes he never gets chosen for this again.

\--

It takes a demonstration, sometimes, to remind you that goalies have just that little bit of something else; and it is only by the reminding that they can continue to be that way.

And so ice hockey season goes on, goalies and their magic renewed, the days to grow longer even as the ice stays cold and fresh and smooth, and goalies everywhere will let out their collective breaths until the first December dawn comes once more.

**Author's Note:**

> \- If anyone doesn't remember, Juuso Kopra is the goalie who made 100 saves. This happened December 3 of 2017.  
> \- The solstice is an old, old concept, but sometimes magic is just impatient. It really takes place ~December 21-22 and not December 3.  
> \- The reason I used dawn over midnight: the sun is the important factor in the tradition of the solstice (hence the root "sol" I guess).  
> \- I picked Räty and Scrivens because I could confirm their teams' locations via the schedules and my research obsession reared its ugly head. I even managed to double-check that the Kisa-Eagles were the home team on all the days in question. I'm not sure but I think that might make it sadder.  
> \- Jesperi Moisala is the backup goalie for the Kisa-Eagles. I don't know why Kopra had to play back-to-back games, since they seem to be a 1A-1B tandem.  
> \- Tony Bruns is the guy who made 98 saves the year prior, on December 2.


End file.
